- Sony Honda Mobility has scrapped the Afeela EV project
- “It does not have a viable path forward” a new statement reveals
- Pressure is mounting on Honda to stem losses
Anyone who has attended the Consumer Electronics Show over the past decade will have experienced the hype around Sony Honda Mobility — but that bubble has now sadly burst with the joint venture scrapping its long-awaited Afeela project.
The venture was officially announced in 2022 and came about after Sony debuted its headline-grabbing Vision S concept vehicle at the turn of the decade.
While relatively generic from the outside, the electric vehicle promised Sony’s computing power on the inside, effectively transforming the cabin into a movie-bingeing, button-bashing paradise for fans of Triple-A titles.
Over subsequent years, the project developed and Sony Honda Mobility (SHM) eventually announced two electric vehicles in the original, circa-$100,000 Afeela 1 sedan and a more conventional SUV in the similarly expensive Afeela 2. The former was due to be delivered to Californian customers later this year.
But the joint venture has announced that it won’t pursue the project in light of the fact that Honda has recently scaled-back its electric vehicle activity. Honda stated earlier this week that it would take a write-down of as much 2.5 trillion yen ($15.7 billion) as it trims its EV plans, pushing the company into its first annual loss in almost 70 years, according to Reuters.
In a statement released by Sony Honda Mobility, the joint venture said that, as a result of Honda’s reassessment of its electrification strategy, it will not be able to “utilize certain technologies and assets that were originally planned to be provided by Honda at the time of SHM’s initial business planning”.
However, Sony, Honda and SHM will continue to “discuss and evaluate the future of SHM”, with a further announcement of the joint venture’s future direction coming soon.
But for those who put down early deposits for the Afeela 1, SHM has said that it will issue full refunds of the reservation fees received.
Analysis: Honda got left behind
The Sony Honda Mobility project became a bit of a running joke among those regularly covering the latest technological trends at CES, seeing as it was wheeled out almost every year wearing a slightly different exterior hue or subtly updated styling.
By the time it reached the point where the joint venture was ready to take deposits for its oddly-named sedan, the EV technology powering the vehicle was already out of date and 300 miles of range for over $100,000 simply wasn’t competitive.
Some were even harsher. According to Reuters, Travis Lundy of Quiddity Advisors said shortly before the announcement that the Afeela was "doomed to fail", calling it a "weird vanity project" unlikely to become central to Honda's future.
For all the talk of PlayStation 5 gaming inside and the ability to watch high definition movies, very little was known about the way it drove, the capabilities of its autonomous driving functionality and what it was like to live with.
We do know that it supported relatively slow 150kW charging speeds – a disappointing figure considering a Kia costing a fraction of the asking price can charge at 350kW –and that its 0-60mph acceleration time was a relatively sluggish five seconds.
Throw in the fact that the current Trump administration has removed most support for electric vehicles and imposed tariffs on most imports, and the joint venture’s decision to kill off the project isn’t particularly surprising.
It would have likely lost money and have been left in the dust by the latest battery, autonomous driving and in-car technology coming from China and beyond.
The speed at which EV tech is improving is relentless, and many legacy automakers are finding it very difficult to keep up. RIP Afeela.
